Background

A global financial services firm sought to enhance its understanding of merchant onboarding processes to identify potential improvements – focusing on inefficiencies and compliance risks that acquirers face during onboarding.

Our client was looking for needs around streamlining processes, cost reduction and risk mitigation that that they could potentially meet with a new solution.

They wanted to understand key needs, level of need and what prospects would see as an attractive offer in the market.

Approach

We conducted comprehensive primary and secondary research, including interviews with decision-makers at various Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 banks, payment processors, and fintech companies.

Our approach focused on understanding current onboarding processes: identifying cost and automation in different steps and pain points across the process. We developed insights into the drivers of these processes, the role of regulation and card scheme requirements, and the use of third-party vendors.

We also investigated the current solutions on offer in terms of market perception of specific vendors in the market.

Outcome

Our findings provided our client with insight around how onboarding could be improved to reduce costs and enhance compliance.

We gave our client a clear view of what a winning onboarding solution would look like and how to take it to market. This allowed our client to make an informed decision about future product development and investment programmes.